The Waste Land - Dookie's Blog

(This particular blog was written as a supplement to the entire text of "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, complete with summaries and analysis of each of the five sections. All of this was added to a print by Blookup of my further ramblings on various other subjects; first to lengthen a sparse text ["never mind the quality, feel the width"] and second as an attempt to add gravitas. Only this blog is assessible online, but it does "stand alone" -  if "stand" is the correct word!)

The Waste Land begins with a line that is very well known, that "April is the cruellest month". Normally April is associated with Spring, renewal; why should it be "cruel"? 

What is there to renew and what will effect any renewal? For T S Eliot and many of his own generation, the answer was in the balance. Old ways, old forms of all artistic expression were dated beyond redemption, expressing a world that was gone. Swept away in part by the Great War and its carnage, obliterating the thought and hope of a natural human progress toward "perfection". No longer was the earth at the centre (Copernicus), no longer was "man" a special creation (Darwin), each found themselves alone. They sought meaning beyond the poetry of rural scenes, the art of classical and biblical events, of "important" people pictured upon a horse or throne, above the crowd. 

The poem of W B Yeats, "The Second Coming" sets the scene and asks a few questions:-

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?  

A few "beasts" have  slouched towards Bethlehem since those words were written; but then again, what age has never had its beasts? Is ours any different? 

Well, moving on in the Waste Land I came across the word "shadow", repeated in a few lines, lines that end "I will show you fear in a handful of dust". Pretty dismal stuff, not the sort of thing to brighten a dull afternoon when looking for suitable diversions. In fact the word shadow set my mind off into a tangent, to the words of Layman Hsiang, from a "Zen Reader":-

Shadows arise from forms, echoes come from sounds. If we fiddle with shadows and ignore the forms, we do not recognize that the forms are the roots of the shadows. If we raise our voices to stop echoes, we are not cognizant of the fact that sounds are the roots of the echoes. To try to head for nirvana by getting rid of afflictions is like removing forms to look for shadows. To seek Buddhahood apart from living beings is like seeking echoes by silencing sounds.

So we know that illusion and enlightenment are one road. Ignorance and knowledge are not separate. We make names for what has no name. Because we go by the names, judgments of right and wrong arise. We make rationalizations for what has no reason. Because we rely on the rationalizations, argument and discussion arise. Illusion is not real: who is right, who is wrong? The unreal is not actual: what is empty, what exists? Thus I realize that attainment gains nothing, and loss loses nothing. 

I have no idea if such thoughts relate to anything that T. S. Eliot intended, but I certainly relate them to another section from the Zen Reader:- 

The graduations of the language of the teachings—haughty, relaxed, rising, descending—are not the same. What are called desire and aversion when one is not yet enlightened or liberated are called enlightened wisdom after enlightenment. That is why it is said, “One is not different from who one used to be; only one’s course of action is different from before.” (Pai-chang)

Some look for change, renewal. What exactly has to change? Or is true renewal simply "acceptance", pure acceptance of what is, paradoxically the only source of genuine transformation? Is there then, at such a time, a system, or are we then beyond all systems?

Well, onto the second section of The Waste Land, "A Game of Chess" where Eliot once again seeks to evoke the vacancy of much life as then lived  - and perhaps as it is often always lived. As one analyst has written:- "Modern city-dwellers who float along in a fog are neither dead nor living; their world is an echo of Dante’s Limbo. Chess belongs therefore to this lifeless life; it is the quintessential game of the wasteland, dependent on numbers and cold strategies, devoid of feeling or human contact. Interaction is reduced to a set of movements on a checkered board."

Eliot, drawing also upon many allusions and references mainly lost upon me, centres his summary of vacant drifting lives upon two ladies. One of high society, one of low. While she who is high would appear to be in some sort of boudoir, she who is low seems most definitely in a public house. Someone is constantly calling "time"! 

Whatever, both ladies would appear void of much that could be called authentic life, let alone the "peace that passes understanding." James Joyce takes such life and dialogue and finds humour, even finds in it that which is worthy of consideration, God being a "shout in the street." But here, in this "game of chess," each appears to inhabit their very own drifting emptiness. 

Now I think of the sheer multitude of bodhisattvas in the Flower Ornament Scripture, of their various ways and means of reaching each and every human heart. Where does myth and reality meet? How does it meet? However mundane our own lives maybe there is often the chance to be a "bodhisattva" when opportunity calls. Of coming forth from vacancy.

Next up is The Fire Sermon section. The Fire Sermon of the Buddha is well known. Known in the Pali Canon (Theravada) of Scripture as the Adittapariyaya Sutta, it is a long warning (for want of a better word) against being captive to our senses. Of how our eyes and ears and everything else is subject to an unending succession of impressions - and we are often just a plaything of them, with no inner direction.

Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs.

And so it goes on, with ever greater detail. The "ALL" is aflame! For Mahayana Buddhism, the "all" is both samsara and nirvana. Our world and birth and death and the Deathless. Thinking of what has been said before in this blog, do we seek to quench the flames, put them out or pass through them? Are the flames finally doused and extinguished - or transformed, transfigured, even renewed by Grace, Reality-as-is. Shinran, one of the "fathers" of Pure Land Buddhism, writes in one of his Hymns of the Pure Land":- 

We are quickly brought to realise that blind passions and enlightenment are not two in substance. 

Further:- 

Blind passions and enlightenment become one body and are not two.

And in verse 39 of the 34 hymns of Shinran dedicated to the writings of the Master T'an Luan:-

Through the benefit of the unhindered light,

We realise shinjin (faith) of vast, majestic virtues,

And the ice of our blind passions necessarily melts,

Immediately becoming water of enlightenment. 

In The Waste Land  the fourth section "Death by Water" follows and given the context and themes of the entire poem I can only think of baptism, the death of the "old man" (or woman!) and the coming to be of the new.

Finally, the last section, "What the Thunder Said". Reading the analysis of this on one or two websites, I would say that the words are ambiguous given the sheer variety of explanations. Maybe that was the intent of Eliot? Who knows.

There is a blend of "eastern" and "western" ways and forms, and the whole poem ends with the Hindu cry of shantih, of the peace that passes understanding. 

In the Upanishads the thunder speaks to humanity: it commands us to give (datta), sympathise (dayadhvam), and control (damyata). Can such things ever come to be as the result of  "commandments"?

Eliot draws upon various apocalyptic images, all quite threatening, but as is said in one analysis:-

Release comes not from any heroic act but from the random call of a farmyard bird. 

Which is apt. At least, I think so. Much like the still small voice that answers us from the whirlwind. 

.....but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind the earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice......(OT, Kings)

The Hidden Ground of Love is a whisper, even "empty", beyond comprehension, not a consequence of systems, logic or rational thought.

Ending this blog, I will mention the "underground bodhisattvas" who  "express the immanence of the liberative potential, or buddha nature, in the ground of the earth, as well as in the inner, psychological ground of being, ever ready to spring forth and benefit beings when called. The image represents the fertility of the earth itself and the wondrous, healing, natural power of creation, or the phenomenal world..........the liberative qualities of spatiality and temporality."

Related Quote:-

"Not knowing why, not knowing why - This is my support: not knowing why - This is the Namu-amida-butsu." 

(From Siachi's Journals)

What the Thunder Said

  After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses

                                      If there were water

   And no rock

   If there were rock

   And also water

   And water

   A spring

   A pool among the rock

   If there were the sound of water only

   Not the cicada

   And dry grass singing

   But sound of water over a rock

   Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

   Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

   But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

—But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

DA

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

DA

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

DA

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands

                                    I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

    (And so I pray you, by that Virtue which guides you to the top of the stair, be reminded in time of my pain.' Then he hid himself in the fire that purifies them)

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

                  Shantih     shantih     shantih

(As mantra, shantih conveys … the peace inherent in its inner sound….As a closing prayer, shantih makes of what comes before it a communal as well as a private utterance….And as the “formal ending of an Upanishad” it revises the whole poem from a statement of modern malaise into a sacred and prophetic discourse.)

The Fire Sermon

  The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;

Departed, have left no addresses.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

While I was fishing in the dull canal

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse

Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck

And on the king my father’s death before him.

White bodies naked on the low damp ground

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.

But at my back from time to time I hear

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring

Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter

And on her daughter

They wash their feet in soda water

Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

(And O those children's voices singing in the dome!)

Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc’d.

Tereu

Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter noon

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants

C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

Asked me in demotic French

To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

I too awaited the expected guest.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,

One of the low on whom assurance sits

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,

Endeavours to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defence;

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows one final patronising kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone.

“This music crept by me upon the waters”

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

O City city, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

The pleasant whining of a mandoline

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

               The river sweats

               Oil and tar

               The barges drift

               With the turning tide

               Red sails

               Wide

               To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

               The barges wash

               Drifting logs

               Down Greenwich reach

               Past the Isle of Dogs.

                                 Weialala leia

                                 Wallala leialala

               Elizabeth and Leicester

               Beating oars

               The stern was formed

               A gilded shell

               Red and gold

               The brisk swell

               Rippled both shores

               Southwest wind

               Carried down stream

               The peal of bells

               White towers

                                Weialala leia

                                Wallala leialala

“Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew

Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart

Under my feet. After the event

He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’

I made no comment. What should I resent?”

“On Margate Sands.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.”

                       la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

O Lord Thou pluckest

burning